Tensions over immigration enforcement in San Francisco escalated this week when federal agents clashed with activists who tried to block an arrest outside a courthouse, with the agents at one point driving away in a van with protesters hanging from the hood of the vehicle.
The confrontation on Tuesday came as frustrations grow in the San Francisco Bay Area over federal agents’ aggressive efforts to detain immigrants after they attend required immigration proceedings.
Since late May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have regularly been spotted around the San Francisco Immigration Court building downtown, including in its hallways and waiting rooms and outside its doors. Their presence has attracted a growing number of protesters who have tried to block the building’s entrances and shouted at and scuffled with officers. A month ago, demonstrations forced the immigration courts in both San Francisco and Concord, about 30 miles northeast, to close for nearly two days.
The new ICE approach is a significant break from past practice, when immigration officials largely steered clear of courthouse arrests out of concern that they would deter people from complying with legal orders.
Videos taken by witnesses and local news media on Tuesday show masked agents, with body armor and batons, pushing through a crowd of demonstrators to load a handcuffed man into a black minivan. The footage shows agents and protesters shoving one another as some protesters surround the van.
The van then began to drive slowly down Montgomery Street, even as several protesters clambered on top of it, footage shows. One video captures the van speeding up with one protester clinging to the hood before falling onto the asphalt.
“Someone’s going to get run over,” Joel Garcia, an entrepreneur who captured the footage from a high-rise building across the street, says in the video, which he posted to X.
Emily Covington, a spokeswoman for ICE, said in a statement that protesters on Tuesday had “violently attacked and obstructed federal ICE officers who were simply doing their job by enforcing the rule of law.” She added, “Of course these protesters have zero respect for the rule of law, as they so casually violate it.”
The courthouse arrests have come as the Trump administration is trying to increase deportations as part of its immigration crackdown.
In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security defended the arrests. Immigrants who have a valid claim for asylum can continue with their proceedings, but those who don’t “will be subject to a swift deportation,” the spokesperson said. The department said that most immigrants who entered the United States within the past two years are subject to “expedited removal” if they could not show that they have a valid claim for credible fear of returning to their home countries.
The San Francisco Police Department said in an email that no injuries had been reported from the episode on Tuesday, and that it had not been involved.
The courthouse arrests in San Francisco appear to be part of a new Trump administration effort to detain migrants at immigration courts immediately after hearings if they have been ordered to be deported or if their cases have been dismissed.
California is home to an estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants, more than any other state. Though Los Angeles has become ground zero for the nation’s immigration protests this year, the Bay Area also has seen large and tense demonstrations over immigration raids, with more than 150 people arrested at a single demonstration last month.
In June, President Trump mobilized about 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 Marines in Los Angeles after protests and resistance against ICE agents intensified in Southern California. He has not sent soldiers to the Bay Area or other parts of California.
In San Francisco, federal immigration agents since late May have waited outside courtrooms, waiting to arrest asylum seekers, said Milli Atkinson, the director of the San Francisco Bar Association’s immigrant legal defense program. The organization has confirmed that about 25 people have been arrested at the immigration court in the past month, she said.
“ICE used to show up once or twice a week. Now they’re a daily occurrence,” Ms. Atkinson said, adding that it had spread fear among migrants. “Because it’s random and it’s hard to know when ICE will show up or who they’ll target, there’s been a large increase of people who don’t show up to their hearings.”
Ms. Atkinson declined to identify the man arrested by ICE on Tuesday, but said that a lawyer from her organization had met the man inside the building to guide him through court proceedings. After he was arrested, the asylum seeker was taken to another federal building in San Francisco, where immigration officials did not allow a lawyer from the bar association to speak with him, Ms. Atkinson said.
ICE and Homeland Security officials did not comment on individual cases.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
Soumya Karlamangla is a Times reporter who covers California. She is based in the Bay Area.
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